


Even Here We Are

by pellucid



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-25
Updated: 2014-02-25
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1233958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pellucid/pseuds/pellucid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't expect you to forgive me, Laura."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Here We Are

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through "Crossroads, part 2" (post-ep for that episode, really). Beta by Gabolange.
> 
> Written in May 2007.

Bill runs a hand over his face, eyes closed for a long moment. His skin, his features are all familiar. There's a day's worth of stubble, and this surprises him; surely it's been longer—days, weeks even—since he cut himself shaving, since he laughed on the phone with Laura in the quiet early morning. He brushes a thumb across his neck; the cut is still slightly sore. He feels like himself, but familiar bodies aren't much reassurance these days.

He follows Laura out of the cell, and the door clangs shut behind them. Too much has happened today—the trial, the Ionian Nebula, the Cylons, Kara—and he can't see his way. He hears the prisoner—Kara, not Kara—sigh as she flops onto the bed. He forces himself not to look back

Lee's sitting in the hallway when they come out of the brig, still wearing his flight suit, his hand resting on the helmet beside him. A marine stands nearby. Lee looks so small, sitting there on the floor, and a little frightened, Bill thinks. But maybe only he can see the fear, there in the half moment when Lee is startled by the door opening, disappearing as quickly under a guarded mask.

The summer Lee was four, Bill was on leave and took him every week to the local pool, stood in the water with his arms outstretched and watched his son curl his toes over the edge and vacillate. Always the flash of fear, just before he jumped.

Lee climbs to his feet as they enter the hallway. "Sir. Madam President." The words are clipped.

Laura doesn't respond, leans instead against the opposite wall, and Bill's caught between. 

"Go to bed, Lee," he says for the first time in twenty years.

"You're not throwing me in the brig?" 

Bill sighs. He had placed Lee under guard the moment he landed, but the offense now seems so comparatively small. "There are worse things than getting in a Viper when we need a pilot. Go get some sleep."

Lee hesitates. "What about—" He glances at the sealed door. Bill knows his son has waited outside the brig since Kara was taken into custody, has sat here while he and Laura assessed damages and counted the dead, while they interrogated the prisoner. None of them has slept in more than a day.

"I don't know," Bill answers truthfully. He hears Laura exhale heavily behind him.

Lee nods, defeated, starts to go, then turns back again. "It's Kara, Dad," he says softly, more a plea than a statement. "Isn't it?"

Bill pulls off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know," he repeats. 

He can't read Lee's expression, and then his son is gone, the flight helmet lying forgotten on the floor of the hallway. He doesn't want to leave Lee alone, but he will. It's always too difficult to know what to say, and these days Bill scarcely recognizes his son.

Laura is still slumped against the wall, and Bill suspects she's remaining vertical out of sheer force of will, for the benefit of the marine guards. She's angry with him, too—possibly even more so than Lee is—but he finds her anger less threatening, if only because it's more localized, a blow he expects and can brace for. 

"Madam President," he murmurs, and she takes his arm, leaning too heavily on him as she falls into step.

"If _Galactica_ could spare some guest quarters, I think I won't return to my ship tonight." She waves a hand dismissively. "This morning." Her voice is weary but still laced with its professional edge. 

"I'm sure _Galactica_ can accommodate you," he replies testily. She hasn't stayed in guest quarters on his ship for more than a month. "If you'll just accompany me back to my cabin I'll make arrangements for you."

She casts him a sidelong glance full of annoyance but says nothing.

He won't ask her to stay if she doesn't want to, but when she sinks familiarly onto his couch and kicks off her shoes, he hesitates about asking for guest quarters to be made ready. Even in the soft yellow light, her skin is alarmingly pale against her dark suit. He wonders if she's already fallen asleep, her head leaning against the back of the couch and her eyes closed. 

"I think I left my bag in here," she says without opening her eyes. "There's some chamalla. Could you find it please?"

He locates the bag and starts rummaging. "Do you want it in tea?"

"Mmm—no. Don't bother with tea. Water's fine."

He pours some of the fine, brown powder from the envelope into a glass, watching it dissolve and muddy the water. He hates this drug. He tries to pretend it will make her well, tries to ignore the visions and the fact that she believes them. He can never decide which terrifies him more: Laura as cancer patient or Laura as prophet.

Her hand shakes a little as she reaches for the glass—with pain or exhaustion or both he can't quite tell. She drinks the water, makes a face against the bitterness of the drug, then sets the glass on the table in front of her. She leans forward, pulling off her glasses and resting her forehead in her palms. "My Gods, Bill, what are we going to do?"

It's the "we" that grounds him, gives him hope that no matter how angry, how tired, how sick she might be right now, she's _with_ him. Three ships destroyed—and over 2,000 people killed—by heavy raiders before they could jump away; several others, including the tillium refinery ship, damaged; Kara sitting in his brig, probably a Cylon. But he's not as alone as he feared, and he places a hand on her back, feels the ridges of her spine, the familiar solidity of her body.

He slides his hand up underneath her hair, begins to rub his thumb across the base of her skull.

She hums softly. "That's good. My head aches."

"Turn a little so I can reach better."

She complies, and he threads both hands through her hair, massaging her head, focusing his entire attention on her presence, on willing her pain away.

"I'm still furious with you, you know," she says after a long silence. Her voice is deceptively relaxed, but he knows better than to doubt her.

"I know."

"Frakking Gaius Baltar. How could you, Bill?" She pulls out of his grasp and turns to look at him. Only her lips pressed thin reveal her fury.

He takes a deep breath, chooses his words carefully. He needs her to understand, and he needs her to stay, whether or not she ever really forgives him. "You see it as a personal betrayal."

She is silent, glances down at her hands before meeting his eyes again. He takes it as an assent.

"Then I made the right decision." 

"Hmph," she exhales forcefully. "You were trying to betray me?" She glances around, as if preparing for flight.

"Never," he replies evenly, taking her chin in his hand to guide her gaze back to him. "Laura, we were trying to use the justice system to carry out a personal vendetta."

"He's guilty, and you know it, Bill," she snaps. She pushes his hand away from her face, but she doesn't look away.

"The prosecution couldn't prove he's any more guilty than most of the rest of us." He sighs. "We gave him a trial and we have to play by the rules of a trial. Do we throw out our law because we find it convenient to do so? We could, you and I. We're powerful enough. And maybe one day we will. But not today."

She slumps against the back of the couch, closing her eyes. "He's still a traitor."

"Yes," he agrees. "But at least now we aren't."

Her hand rests on the cushion between them, and he takes it in both of his, tracing the bones and veins, the lines on her palm, brushing a finger lightly across the dark bruise on the back of her hand left by the IV. As commander of the military it is his duty to protect her body; his motivations for protecting her soul are always more complicated.

"You do recall," she murmurs, eyes still closed, "what disasters ensued the last time your principles got in the way of my breaking the law."

"Mmm," he answers, non-committal. He's not sure he believes much in cause and effect anymore, or in the idea that foresight does any good. He suspects the disasters they might prevent aren't worse than the unpreventable ones; people will die no matter which choices they make. In ten minutes today they lost half the number who died on New Caprica. Laura may believe in scriptures and prophesies, but he figures they're doing pretty well if they make it from one day to the next relatively unscathed. He lets her worry about all of humanity while he worries about her.

Her fingers have tightened around his, her thumb rubbing the skin on the inside of his wrist. It's acquiescence rather than forgiveness, he suspects.

"What are we going to do about Captain Thrace?" she asks after a long pause. She's watching him carefully, but he doesn't know what she's looking for or whether he wants to show it to her.

"I don't know," he says, just as he said to Lee. He can't accept Kara— _Kara_ —as a Cylon; neither can he find another explanation for her return. And she claims to have been to Earth. "Do you believe her?"

Laura's lips purse in thought. "It might all be a trap," she muses. "But if it's not, if she's right—Bill, this could really be Earth."

These are the moments he almost believes in Earth. When it's quiet, and he's exhausted, and Laura's eyes are bright with chamalla-heightened hope, some part of his agnostic resistance slips. Believing in Earth is irrelevant, really. He believes in Laura, whether he wants to or not. He has a dream sometimes of her, hair and dress crimson in the sunlight, leading them all—himself, Lee, the entire fleet—to the edge of a precipice. He always wakes up before he sees what's on the other side.

"We should get some sleep," he deflects. "We're exhausted."

"Hmm." She smiles faintly, squeezes his hand.

"You still too angry with me to share my bed?" he asks as he stands, pulling her to her feet beside him.

"Yes," she replies, the corner of her mouth quirking up to show him she's only half serious. "But I'm also too tired to make other arrangements."

He wraps an arm around her waist, and together they walk to his rack. "I don't expect you to forgive me, Laura." 

She turns, raises one hand to run across the stubble on his cheek, and studies him carefully, eyes crinkled slightly in concentration. Her thumb runs across his lower lip, and he kisses it. 

She rests her forehead against his shoulder, and he pulls her in and holds her tight, concentrates on the feeling of her body pressed against his own, her arms wrapped around him. "Come to bed," he whispers.


End file.
